A heartbroken student broke into a mortuary with an axe and examined corpses in the mistaken belief that a woman he fancied had died, police said.
Benjamin Barton, of Bognor Regis, West Sussex, pleaded guilty at Southampton Crown Court to a charge of criminal damage but was acquitted of an offence of burglary.
The court heard that the 24-year-old had fallen for Amy Ogden whom he had met at the University of Southampton but feared she had been killed when he was unable to contact her for several days in the run-up to Valentine’s Day. Convinced that she had died, he broke into Southampton General Hospital’s mortuary with an axe.
He was fined £1,000, placed under a 12-month community supervision order and told to complete nine months mental health treatment.
